Blood Orange

Remember the racket of mid noughties band Test Icicles? Or the twee hipsterisms of Lightspeed Champion? No? It's probably for the best. Apart from a small handful of vague tunes, there wasn't much either outfit had going for them other than a magnetic ability to be drawn to the bottom of record shop bargain bins.

But the third chapter in their tale is looking slightly more promising. Now songwriter/producer Dev Hynes is back, this time as knob twiddler extraordinaire working under the name of Blood Orange. And perhaps most surprisingly if his previous form is owt to go by, he's doing some wonderful things.

Check out the new one from Mutya Keisha Siobhan (previously known as the first incarnation of the Sugababes). The chord change into the verse is a knee trembler...

Meeting the Murkle Man

Grime emerged all scruffy and raw back when we were living in Sheff town in the early to mid 2000s and blammo if it wasn't the most excting musical force we'd ever encountered. British, youthful (unlike Mumford and Sons, your parents wouldn't get it) and musically totally fucking weird. At the time it made a bass heavy kerfuffle and exposed a whole new breed of producers and artists to a massive audience. The mainstream briefly eye balled the grime crew, gave them a few moments of their attention before running for the hills scared and confused.

It meant that for a few years there was a large vat of record deals and money being churned up as the music industry movers and shakers endeavoured to get their head round what was going on. For some folk this worked out just fine - Dizze, Stryder, Skepta and their successors Tine Tempah and Labrinth have gone on to be big in a whole slurry of different games. Even Wiley has had massive success despite his inabililty to comply with the demands of the major players. Others have disappeared without a trace (Demon - where are you now bruv?) while others, such as Jammer and Lethal Bizzle, still have music careers but ones where the noises are made are relatively minor.

Thankfully with my current employ, we get to find out about these sort of cats and I had the pleasure of meeting Jammer at a press day in prep for his album Living the Dream. It was in a ping pong club slash bar near Holborn and our Murkle Man was almost an hour late before he rocked up in the most ludicrous garms I've seen in timeeeee.

As a result, we spent most of it talking about the elephant above (the record sleeve is his debut album Jahmanji). It was made funnier by just how baked our Jammer seemed to be.

You can check out the fruits of our interview here on M Magazine.

Below you can see what was going on through Jammer's eyes in a video he put out after the day. Confusion rules...

High rolling

Living the dream

Homerrrrrrrr

Got the shout out from one of our South Yorks bros for a Homer Simpson impression. This was the best one could do with an extreme hangover and a Scotch egg in hand...

There ain't no rain in Spain

It's probably not surprising that when you hit the big 3-0 you get more invites to weddings than you do to raves. But getting hitched is going off big time this year with invites, stag dos, hen dos and the like all raining down like the proverbial cats and dogs. Which is no bad thing don't get me wrong. Does it mean in 18 months time we should expect a deluge of sprogs? Is this how it works? I'm guessing so...

Anyhoo Spain was our port of call for the first wedding bash of 2013. We landed on the Tuesday at Malaga airport, then spent the next five days really taking advantage of Nerja's generous provision for heavy drinkers and heavy smokers.

We did both pretty much continually via hot tubs, tuna salads, BBQs, sweetcorn, taxi rides, dog fish, and jumping into chilly pools. Props and thanks to the bride and groom (now husband and wife Andy and Kirsty) cos it was a total treat. In the heat. Here's a selection of images to prove that yes we did leave the country and didn't just spend the six days hibernating in the nearest Wetherspoons with data roaming switched off the phones.

Flight rider

The snoring man

Our eyes were drawn to the EUR2 bit

The first of about a gazillion

San Miguel butties. Not, as I thought, beer sandwiches

The view - the tuna

That's a big fucking bill

The wedding bash - awwww

Lobster to start

Pork for afters

Our table proved to be the most creative when it came to drawing something romantic

The groom with Jimmy Saville as a yoot - look at that tracksuit

Absent chums

A shitload of cats chilling oot.

The 'notorious' Tooty Fruit square

The view from the back of the 2 EUR a pint joint...

Boar off

Want/Need

Chic @The Kentish Town Forum

We went to go and see Chic play at London's Kentish Town Forum the other week as part of the Red Bull Music Academy's takeover of anything which has a music muscle in its body. The show was a weird one, mainly due to the glorious time we'd had at the Warehouse Project a couple of years back when we'd travelled up to Manchester to see them. Nile Rodgers, the band's mainman, is on the brink of being everywhere and props to him for getting this far. He's staved a crippingly huge drug habit, then cancer to stay at the top of his game - but there was summat about this live outing which fell a bit flat. No matter - check the full review either via the link to the Hyponik website or below in all its glory...

Hyponik Chic review RBMA X Lovebox present Chic

Chic locked in

Arthur Baker wanders on stage looking very much an old man

The big DC

SOPHIE

Numbers, lorded over by Scottish party boy Jackmaster, is one of my favourite record labels and their latest release - BIPP by SOPHIE - is one of the best they've stuck out in recent times. It's just so fucking weird. It's the first tune for some time that I've reloaded over and over on YouTube to try and get my puny mind round. 

You can read the full review either below or on the Hyponik website here. Below the review you can check out the lead tune. And get your ears pinned back. It's a biggggyyyy...